Mobilize: Motorola Unveils Its First Android Phone, the Cliq

Motorola jumped into the Android smartphone market at our Mobilize Conference in San Francisco on Thursday, unveiling its first Android phone — called the Cliq — that features a new skin for Android called MotoBlur. Co-CEO Motorola Dr. Sanjay Jha called Android a platform that would enable Motorola to innovate and solve problems that cell phone users have been facing. The Cliq will be available exclusively for T-Mobile customers later this year and T-Mobile’s Chief Technology Officer, Cole Brodman, who took the stage with Jha, called the Cliq, with its MotoBlur home screen, “the first phone with social skills.”

The Cliq has a sliding QWERTY keyboard, 3G and Wi-Fi connections, 5 MP camera, 24 frames-per-second video speed and a standard headphone jack. The phone will also feature an HTML browser via Google, a number of Google mobile services such as Google Maps, built-in GPS, as well as access to Google’s mobile application store.

While the Cliq is cool, the MotoBlur shows the true power of Android. It graphically integrates all user messaging accounts via email, text message or social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. It also syncs photos and uses themed widgets as a way to enable the user to access different content. Jha, who called MotoBlur “a differentiator” for his company, said that Motorola would offer it on several other phones in 2010, including the ex-U.S. version of the Cliq, the Dext, that will be offered via Orange and Telefonica.